


an average life

by cuethe_pulse



Category: Community (TV)
Genre: F/M, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 19:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuethe_pulse/pseuds/cuethe_pulse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's trying. And she could love him for it, maybe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	an average life

**Author's Note:**

> For my [Jessie boo](http://betterinorange.livejournal.com/)! Inspired by [our thread](http://bakerstreet.dreamwidth.org/899611.html?thread=573362203#cmt573362203) at the pregnancy meme.

Jeff sleeps over sometimes, now. He never did before but now he’s lying in her bed and _spooning_ her and, all right, admittedly he’s pretty tense and he keeps moving because he doesn’t know where to put his left hand and the fact that they both can laugh at how weird this is doesn’t make it any less awkward.

“Do you…want breakfast this time?”

“Well, that depends. Does ‘breakfast’ mean that box of Crunchy Nut that’s been sitting on your fridge since before I met you?”

“Ha, if it was before you met me, how would you know it was there?”

“The expiration date was four years ago.”

Shamed into silence, she shifts beneath his arm and presses further back against his chest. She feels the stiffness, the resistance, but his hand slips beneath her shirt and touches her stomach where it expands, and he’s trying, and she could love him for it, maybe.

 

Earlier that day, she lay in the doctor’s office with cold gel spread on her abdomen. Jeff stood beside her and sometimes he patted her shoulder or her hair, like the only thing he knew how to do was make sure she was there, he was there, they both were. To be fair, she hadn’t taken his hand in hers, either.

“All right,” the technician said, watching the screen. “Let’s find your baby.”

“Fetus,” Britta corrected her, quickly, an instinct, a need to be right. “It’s a fetus until it can survive outside the womb. 26 weeks.”

“Thanks, Google,” Jeff quipped, somewhere above her head.

The technician politely ignored them. “There we go. See right here—about the size of a grapefruit now.”

“Oh, hey, Britta,” Jeff near-whispered, bending down to see from her angle. “I can tell the resemblance already; if you listen closely you can hear him asking for a ‘baggle’.”

“Better than inheriting your ginormous forehead. Dodged a bullet there.” It was easy, that back and forth, the exchange of insulting pleasantries; it was much easier than talking about what they were going to do, so much easier than saying anything real. The sound of a tiny heartbeat thumping steadily, echoing in the small, dark room—that was real enough.

 

“How about pancakes?” she asks him. She’s craving them—whole wheat, with blueberries, a dollop of whipped cream on top.

“Pancakes are fine.” His noncommittal answer gusts over the fine hairs on the back of her neck and sets them standing.

The realization hits her, suddenly, “I’ve never made pancakes.”

“Luckily, that’s why God created Ihop.”

The sound of sleep is in his voice but she’s wide awake now, panicked. “I’ve never made pancakes. Jeff. I’m going to be a _mom_ and I’ve never made pancakes.”

“Britta.” His voice is heavy, lazy, on her skin. “Relax. Pancakes are easy. Annie’s Boobs could do it.”

She shrugs his arm off with a snort, feet out of bed and on the floor without knowing where to go. “Well, you would know.”

“I meant the monkey.”

She paces, huffing and biting at her nails, stepping over discarded clothes already patched with cat hair. She wishes she could smoke. She can’t. She can’t do this. She _can’t_ do this.

“I can’t do this,” she tells the floor. “I can’t be a mother. Who actually thought I could be a mother?”

“To be fair, no one really did.”

She throws his clothes at him. He’s no help. He hasn’t been any help since the day she called and told him she was pregnant and they stayed on the phone without speaking for a full half hour. What have they been doing these last few months?

“Britta?”

What has _she_ been doing?

“Britta.”

How could she not have known better?

“Okay, Earth to Britta!”

Jeff grabs her wrist, gently, tugs her back. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed in the Garfield boxers she forced on him the first time he slept over. His eyes are tired and his face is soft and she starts to remember that he cares. He’s here.

“C’mere.”

He pulls and she comes, settles into his lap with his arms around her. Her nose touches his hair; she inhales and finds the smell of him is comforting. When did _that_ happen?

“All right,” he sighs somewhere into her breasts. “What is it?”

“I’m going to be the worst mother on the planet.”

“Turn on the Lifetime movie channel, I bet some of those women would give you a run for your money.”

“I’m not ready for this,” she presses on. “I won’t ever be ready for this. If anything, I’m like an _anti_ -mother! I don’t subscribe to this ancient notion that my body’s only purpose is bringing a child into this awful world. What kind of monster would do that, anyway?  ‘Oh, hello, baby, welcome to the land of genocide and disease and reality TV! This is your home, enjoy it before global warming or the nukes burn us all to death and the earth becomes a sad shell of a planet that future life forms will shake their heads at in—whatever is the extraterrestrial equivalent of pity!’”

“Wow. And here I was just gonna show up with balloons and a teddy bear.”

She squirms like she wants to leave but he holds her there. She’s starting to learn what this means, his touch. It’s his attempt a comfort and assurance when he doesn’t have a Jeff Winger speech to pull out of his pocket, when even he is too overwhelmed and uncertain. She’s trying to appreciate it. She tells herself it’s better than empty words and false promises.

“Hey, think of it this way,” he says. “Maybe this’ll be the kid that grows up to change all that. With you for a mother—”

“With me for a mother,” she scoffs. “Right. Like I’ve done _so_ much. I’m sure getting wasted in Amsterdam has really prepared me for raising the earth’s superhero.” She leans back so she can look at him and her nails dig lightly into his shoulders with the sincerity of her fear. “I’m not done _living_ , Jeff.”

“You don’t have to _stop_ living, Britta. You can go wherever you want—”

“What, with the kid strapped on my back?”

“Oh _definitely_ not.  I can see you now: sitting him down in an internet café and getting so involved in your e-mail that you forget him. Or, more likely, trading him for a rug or a really cool pot while you’re high on opiates.”

“Okay, that might be a possibility, Winger, but that doesn’t make you less of an ass for saying it.” She breaks his hold this time, but the truth in his words keeps her from going very far; she falls back onto her side of the bed, exhausted from her rampant anxieties.  “Fine. Say I do manage to travel the world and do all the things I want to do. I’ll be gone, and this kid will grow up with postcards and souvenirs for parents.”

“The grapefruit will have me.”

It’s the answer to a question that’s never been asked, not once. He’s been to appointments with her, he’s slept over, he’s been there since the beginning but she’s never wanted to assume anything, never thought enough about it to hope for anything. There’s always been that chance, the chance that Jeff Winger, the cool cat with an aversion to commitment and classic Daddy Issues, will win out over the Jeff Winger who always does his best to come through, the occasionally good lover and the even better friend.

And maybe, on some level, she’s wanted him to say it, say something. Maybe it’s been another worry this whole time, tied in with all the others, that she’s never wanted to face. Because she knows she wouldn’t have asked him herself, wouldn’t seek his help, wouldn’t demand to know whether he’d be around when she might need him. And she _may_ need him; she isn’t sure. But she does want him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says, and he’s smiling at her, scared and certain, and she believes him. “I’ll take him to Ihop. And we’ll save a place for you, just in case you’re in the mood for pancakes.”

She pulls him down, kisses him, and in the morning he's still holding her, his hand touching her stomach, and she loves him, maybe.


End file.
